After reminding ourselves that etextbooks are not yet as widespread as ebook novels, and that paper books generally are still most widely read, we examined what ebook features make a good educational experience.

Though many features could have been mentioned, the majority were still about the experience itself. Top of the bill: formative assessment at the end of a chapter. Either online or offline, it needs to be interactive, and there need to be a lot of items readily available. Other notable features in the area include a desire for contextualised discussion about a text. Global is good, but chats limited to other learners in a course is better. A way of asking for clarification of a teacher by highlighting text was another notable request.

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One of the most immediately obvious differences between a regular book and an e-textbook is the inclusion of little quizzes at the end of a chapter that allow the learner to check their understanding of what they’ve just learned. Formative assessment matters in textbooks.

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The course tutor rounded off the course with a short video of his reflections. For those of you who like facts and figures:

• 29,568 students watched at least some of the video lectures
• 20,443 students did at least one of the automatically marked multiple choice quizzes
• 3,203 students completed at least one of the assignments
• 765 students completed all 5 assignments
• students came from all around the world, with at least 130 countries being represented.

As students, we’ve had ample opportunity to provide feedback to the teaching team about the Coursera platform and the course as a whole. That feedback has been acted on quickly with tweaks being made to class materials or assignments, while students are still working on them. MOOCs therefore offer an agile solution that takes the student’s needs into account.

It hasn’t just been a one-way transaction. As a student, I’ve learned a tremendous amount from both the teaching team and my peers. The teaching team has also learnt from the students, who have shared resources, reading lists, articles, etc and helped other students. Taking an online course doesn’t mean that the student is isolated. Many students have held their own meet-ups, either face-to-face or virtually. You could say, using the classic cybernetics term, that they were part of a self-organising system, building up communities to support and help each other long after the course has finished.

Just one year ago, there was no Coursera. So everything I’ve used on the course has been created over a very short period of time. But you wouldn’t know. Aside from a few bugs and minor niggles, the whole thing ran very smoothly. One thing to note is that Stanford doesn’t need to run this course. It already has a great reputation, but that hasn’t stopped the teaching team from working hard to pull together the content and make it freely available to everyone.

And now the MOOC has just got better. I’ve just had an email from Coursera to tell me that it now has a Career Service to help Coursera students find jobs. Should I wish to take part (and I may need to shortly), they will share my details with selected partner companies (likely to be US based). This could be good for me as a student, although it’s not without concerns. In the (probably very near) future, a company could cherry pick the best students from online courses, because they’ll be able to follow students with potential as they submit their coursework. They may even influence the course itself. Coursera will no doubt get its revenue from acting as a matchmaking service. However, this needs to be handled carefully. Issues could include companies bombarding students with advertising, a limited pool of companies being able to select students (but who wouldn’t be flattered to be offered a job by the likes of Google or Apple?), US only companies, companies that only support (financially?) Stanford (or other Coursera universities), etc. It’s not without its potential difficulties. However, from a student point of view, it seems like a great idea.

So did I finish the course? I certainly did and can now quite legitimately say that I have a Distinction from Stanford University!

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Mobile Web Apps: A Briefing Paper

With the growth and constant shift in the mobile space institutions could be forgiven for feeling a little lost as to how to best tackle the issue of delivering content and/or services that are optimised for mobile devices. Apple, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone…app ecosystems seemingly everywhere you turn and each requiring different development approaches; SDKs, programming languages, approval processes and terms & conditions. I think it’s fair to say that for institutions, looking to deliver to mobile devices while being as inclusive as possible, this area is something of a minefield.

A viable, alternative approach is developing Mobile Apps using open web technologies and standards; technologies that continue to improve performance and offer more powerful functionality – as is now being talked about quite a bit on the topic of HTML5.

The briefing paper is intended to give an overview of this space and cover some of the key talking points, with a collection of useful resources with which to delve deeper into the subject for those that decide that mobile web apps are indeed a workable solution for them. I’m hoping that an interested audience would consist of institutional web staff, students services, learning technologists, maybe even an IT services manager here and there

It’s in PDF format but I’ll also be looking to get it in web form on the CETIS website over the next few days and, of course, I’d welcome any feedback and questions on it here.

If you’re interested, get it at http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/images/7/76/Mobile_Web_Apps.pdf

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Argon is the completely open standards augmented reality browser that allows rapid development and deployment of Web 2.0 style augmented reality content.

Argon renders a standards compliant combination of KML, HTML, CSS and JavaScript served via typical HTTP servers

Multiple simultaneous channels, analogous to browser tab on the desktop, let authors create dynamic and interactive AR content using existing web development toolsets.

The browser is stated as being the reference implementation of Georgia Tech’s work on the KHARMA Mobile AR Architecture, which combines HTML for content with KML for defining geographical co-ordinates (as used by Google Maps, Google Earth & Yahoo Maps).

Argon Mobile AR Browser

One thing that seems to counter-balance this standards flag bearing though (for me, at least) is the fact that Argon is only available on iPhone – in fact, the developers go so far as to specify that it is best run on the latest version, iPhone 4. Hopefully that will change over time and we’ll see versions for the other popular mobile platforms too: the ever growing Android and the recently adrenaline-injected Windows Phone 7. After all, it would seem a little odd lauding the open standards route while then being restricted to a single delivery platform.

But there’s plenty of growing room in the still young AR space. With the technology making a significant appearance in this year’s Horizon Report – given a ‘Time-to-adoption’ period of 2-3 years, and us already seeing mobile augmented reality being implemented at Exeter Uni on their JISC LTIG Project: Unlocking the Hidden Curriculum, it’s good to see a new offering in this area to possibly compete with the current big players: Layar, Wikitude & Junaio.

My wish? My wish is that we could see something like Argon develop into a platform for AR developers, built on open standards, that would be supported by those players and open up the AR space to easily create interactive and immersive mobile AR experiences & content that you could then deploy cross-browser. Like I say though…early days yet. Hopefully we’ll see it happen.

Oh..one more thing…I have installed Argon on my (now lowly) iPhone 3GS and while the browser looks pretty standard fare – channel view, map, search, etc – unfortunately it seems there are absolutely no POIs (Points of Interest) nearby and the search for local channels isn’t yet implemented. So, as yet, it’s a bit difficult to get a handle of whether Argon would float my boat. Next up I shall go and check out the developer’s area and have a look at creating my own POIs and content. I’ll let you know how I get on…

The Argon browser can be found at http://argon.gatech.edu/

*** Update ***

There are POIs available nearby – I just hadn’t looked at the getting started tutorial properly (I know…I’m one of those blokes that doesn’t read the manual). I’m liking the search box in the realview but the POI icon itself is a bit flaky and judders about a bit too much – I suspect their recommendation of using iPhone 4 is down to the gyroscope aiding with that, which the 3GS doesn’t have. But as you can see from the screenshot, it does the basics and I would imagine one can customise the look with your own CSS. Now…let’s hope their documentation is clear and helpful and not simply written by some Tefal headed genii in a Georgia Tech Lab…

Screenshot of Argon AR Browser

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